"Adriaansens& v.Gorsel" wrote:
Dick King, University of Arizona
you manage the records that are made by "your" own organization. Is there
an outside inspector or controller that checks your work? Someone of the
government because thats how it is in Holland. Furthermore can you tell
me something about schools that educate people to manage records?Greetings,
Margriet van Gorsel.
Margriet,
My department works cooperatively with the records management
division of the state government (State of Arizona). Our records
(University records) are really the property of the state and are subject
to state records law. My department also manages records that are
created using federal government funds (grants and contracts) and so we
must also follow federal law. We work with the state and they approve
our retention schedules (how long we kep records) and we report to them
when records are disposed of. No one from the state or federal government
(or the University) checks our work. It is assumed that I know what
I am doing and that I have also hired and trained people to do the records
management job correctly. In other words, we police ourselves and
try to audit our own work for mistakes. We have kept the process
simple enough so that we don't have many problems at our records center.
The main problems are with other units in the University who think they
don't have to conform to the law or refuse to participate in the records
program. We have no real enforcement power (except to go through
our boss the Vice President or get our attorneys to scare them) so we try
to convince people it is in their best interest to cooperate.
As to trainging. There are many sources of distance
learning opportunities in both the US as well as Canada (I think) and Australia.
There has been several discussions of this on the list and should be available
in the list archives. If you can't access that I think you should
just put your question to list describing what you are looking for and
I'm certain you will get many responses. If you just need a book
to read I can suggest one but the reference is at my shop and I am working
from my home today. Dick King, University of Arizona
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